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SACRAMENTO-

A clear favorite has emerged in the search for a new stadium site to lure Major League Soccer to Sacramento.

With MLS representatives set to arrive next week one of the big criteria will be to show them a clear path to a new downtown stadium.

“You know, what is ready to build,” Erika Bjork, the V.P. of Marketing & Communications for the Republic FC, said Thursday. “So when you take that into account, it really nails it down to two or three sites.”

If you’ve passed by the railyards lately, there has been a lot of development to the site. All that infrastructure work has made the downtown railyards stadium-ready. In fact, it’s been that way for a while.

“The railyards was already explored as an arena site,” Bjork said. “So there were certain pieces put in place that kind of helped do some due-diligence for us ahead of time that we didn’t have to do.”

Larry Kelley, owner of LDK Ventures, who’s group acquired the rights to develop the 240-acre site, told the Sacramento Business Journal last month, “with the entitlements we have, it would be easy to see how a stadium could go there.”

And the railyards also checks off most of the boxes when it comes to ideal criteria for the MLS.

“Within the demo, 18 to 34,” Bjork said. “Access to pubs and restaurants, that type of entertainment before and after a game. And access to transportation.”